Canada Loses Ground On Hurun’s Billionaires List

Rich lists. You got to love ‘em. Unless you’re no longer on them, of course, which appears to be what is happening to Canada. If a new report published last week by Shanghai-based Hurun Research Institute is anything to go by, then Canada isn’t home to nearly as many billionaires as before. Also, the nation doesn’t stand quite as tall among other home-to-rich-people-competing countries as what had previously and for the longest time been the case.

Last week’s Hurun report basically measured billionaires for the purpose of the inclusion of the world’s leading billionaire-countries onto its annual Hurun Global Rich List. According to the eventual outcome of the list’s ranking, the US and China lead the way, with these two countries this year being home to more billionaires than any other country in the world.

Not As Great As Before

Canada for a long time occupied the number 9 spot on the list, but what with the number of billionaires calling the Great White North home having remain unchanged for the past two years, the country has now fallen all the way back to number 13.

As for the US, despite being one of the top 2 countries in the world as far as billionaires go, the country is now officially outranked by China by quite a bit. The latest Hurun statistics suggest that China officially outranks the US by a ratio of 3:1. Also interesting to note is the fact that China is officially home not only to the most self-made billionaires in the world, but also to at least half of the world’s self-made female billionaires.

The coronavirus may very well be spreading mayhem and general chaos throughout the markets, but it appears to be instigating what can only be described as mini booms across selected industries such as the pharmaceutical industry, the online gaming industry and the online education industry. So much so that billionaires living in China are experiencing a record start-of-year. No irony lost there.

Thomson Tops Our List

As for Canada’s billionaire ruler-of-the-roost, media mogul David Thomson and family (Thomson Reuters), worth a combined CA$43.4 billion, continue to top the in-house list. In fact, so far ahead of the CA pack is Thomson and his family, that they come in at a net worth of at least 3 times that of their next closest Canadian competitor, e-commerce tycoon businessman Joseph Tsai.